you're the secret i keep
by Nirav
Summary: she doesn't know how to be anything but alone and she's never believed in fairytales, so it just figures that it would be clear blue disney princess eyes that she falls in love with. (sequel to the plastic dwarf warlord in the cereal box)
1. Chapter 1

By the time Beca and Chloe have been together for a year—really together, officially together, when Beca's stopped traveling and Chloe's moved out from her apartment with Aubrey and they go on dates and to the grocery store like normal people—at least sixteen other people know that the first conversation they ever had started with Chloe ambushing Beca in a dormitory shower. Chloe isn't remotely shy about, well, anything, and she'll tell the story without hesitation, complete with a coquettish smirk and a wink thrown Beca's way if she's in the vicinity. If Beca happens to blush, it's just all the better, apparently.

As it stands, everyone thinks that if Beca and Chloe were to have a song—though really, the idea of them having _a_ song is laughable, because there's never just one song, or two songs, or a hundred songs; there are albums and playlists, mixes and symphonies—it would be _Titanium_. That's the one that they both wind up with tattoos from, the one that everyone knows the story about, the one that's fun and flirtatious and easy to talk about.

But then there's the flip side, the part where Beca took years to sort herself out, where Chloe was slogging through medical school and the minefield of their undefined and unpredictable relationship. The part where Beca slept alone in faraway places when she _could_ sleep and stayed awake for days at a time when she couldn't, burying her free time in building and tweaking and discarding mix after mix after mix just to occupy her mind.

The years she spends touring and playing club gigs, she garners a reputation. The girls throwing themselves are her walk away convinced she's straighter than straight; the boys walk away certain that she's unbelievably gay. She clings to the mystery like her eyeliner and wristbands and tattoos and wears it like a shield, brushing people away and letting them think what they will.

No one knows that every time she considers giving in—it would be so easy, after all; she's in her element in dark clubs and darker deejay booths, steeped in rhythm and sound and _music_ that she's made for the world to enjoy, and it draws people to her like she's a black hole they can't escape from—there's a girl in Los Angeles who's basically a Disney princess, all clear ringing vocals and bright blue eyes, and all Beca has is rooms full of people who matter so much less.

It doesn't matter who it is. They all smile with coy eyes and questing hands, and Beca stumbles over a rhythm that should be easy and instinctive, a sporadic syncopated beat jarring against the rest of the song, because whoever it is _isn't_ Chloe and Beca doesn't know how to be not-alone with anyone else. She may be in her element with the music spilling out of her through a laptop and expensive speakers, but she's forever out of step, ever since she tripped into falling for Chloe's stupidly blue eyes and stupidly happy demeanor and stupidly wonderful everything.

It could be so easy to stay. Life with Chloe could be good, and she's the only one Beca's ever wanted it with. But then there are the weekly phone calls she still gets—one from her mom and one from her dad— to nudge at the splinters a nasty divorce left embedded in Beca's skin, and it doesn't matter how warmly Chloe's voice resonates in Beca's chest or how clear and blue her eyes are when there's a twofold genetic disposition to ruin good things that courses through Beca just like the music does.

It could be so easy to stay, and so easy to rip them to pieces as she did, so Beca leaves instead. She can't stay away because even if the only thing she's ever known is how to be on her own, she's forgotten how to do so without doses of Chloe's warmth to recharge on. It could be so easy to stay, so she never does.

Leaving is easy the first time. Barden wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, and the Bellas were friendly and fun enough in their own right, but Chloe is the only one who sought Beca out beyond rehearsals and setlist ideas. It's Chloe and her Disney eyes catching Beca's across every room and blurring out all the other unimportant people, but Chloe is leaving and it's going to _hurt_ even when it had no right to, so Beca packed up and left first.

Her flight to LA is a redeye with a layover in Houston. There's some kind of mechanical issue or another that grounds their flight, and the airline offers a voucher for anyone willing to wait to fly out the next day; Beca takes it without hesitation and spends all night sitting on the floor by a power outlet, laptop on her legs and headphones over her eyes. Ten hours later, she smells like Red Bull and a Texas airport, her eyes are bloodshot and circled by exhaustion instead of makeup, and she finishes burning a CD with the first instrumental mix she's ever attempted because some apologies are too complex to involve words of any kind.

The first six months she's gone, trading occasional texts and even more occasional phone calls with Chloe, every other mix she builds echoes around the Lou Reed's melancholy _thought of you as everything I had but couldn't keep_.

When she lands a gig in LA for six months, her first instinct is to call Chloe. Her second is to stay silent, because Chloe is in med school and Beca's mother still hates her ex-husband for leaving her and bitched about him for ten minutes during her last weekly phone call. She settles for a text, half hoping that Aubrey will talk Chloe out of responding, but winds up in a Los Angeles Starbucks with her anyways.

Chloe kisses her, when they're sitting in hers and Aubrey's apartment in the middle of a bottle of wine and an argument about whether _first_ means _better_ and if derivatives of the Velvet Underground will ever be as good as the original. Fairytale romance had never been in the cards for her, but Chloe kisses her, soft and unexpected and tinged with the taste of cheap pinot grigio, and Beca falls into it before she can catch herself. She doesn't know how to be anything but alone and she's never believed in fairytales, so it just figures that it would be clear blue Disney princess eyes that she falls in love with.

She leaves LA when a new job comes up following the tail end of her gig. Months pass as she flits around the country— four on a tour, a few weeks in Seattle, a jaunt up to Vancouver that involved mildly questionable border crossings, an unofficial bar crawl-esque month in New York City—and she floats back to LA for weekends, long layovers, a day to recharge.

Chloe takes her in every time, still all smiling mouth and sparkling eyes and confident fingers that know exactly how to dismantle Beca from the inside out, but she looks exhausted even in her sleep, the circles under her eyes nudging through the makeup.

_Just let me be in love with you_, is how Chloe puts it, and it rips into Beca, just like the way her mother sobbed hysterically for a day after finding out about her husband's affair and then emerged from her tears and wine with a smooth façade of indifference towards Beca, who had his eyes and his smile and his obstinacy.

She _could_ stay in LA and be just as successful with her career, but staying is more terrifying than leaving because leaving hurts them both, but when she's gone, Chloe isn't tied down to someone who doesn't know how to be anything but alone.

The relief that lightens the clouds in Chloe's eyes, though, when Beca swears that she hasn't been with anyone else—which is ridiculous, because _Christ_ shouldn't it be obvious when she keeps coming back to Chloe with pathological insecurity and unskilled fumblings that she hasn't even kissed anyone else since the first time they slept together— shatters any delusions Beca may have held, though, and suddenly, New York feels farther from Los Angeles than it ever has before.

Her time working the engagement in New York—Thanksgiving and Christmas were spent apartment-sitting and eating Chinese takeout with only the owner's twelve-year-old Jack Russell to keep her company; New Years, sober and working and alone for the enjoyment of hundreds of drunk strangers who all have someone to kiss as the clock ticks over—is filled with a growing collection of songs and remixes ringing with _blue eyes, you're the secret I keep_.

A day before Chloe's 28th birthday, Beca is in Chicago and her phone has a collection of tired texts from Chloe, who's halfway into an oncology rotation and struggling to keep her optimism afloat. It happens on a whim, telling the club owner she had to bail and booking a flight she couldn't really afford—well, she _could_, because she hasn't had to pay for a hotel room in three years, she doesn't have a car, and half of what she wears she's owned since the eleventh grade; she just isn't used to the fact that her you'll-never-support-yourself hobby somehow became a well-paying _career_ when she wasn't looking—and landing in LAX with six hours left on Chloe's birthday, Roger Daltrey and _my dreams, they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be_ ricocheting on repeat around her skull.

Chloe looks terrible—worn down by long hours and fatigue and an exhaustion that will take so much more than sleep to erase—and it shoves Beca towards holding doors and insisting on driving back to Chloe's place even though driving in LA is almost as terrifying as family holidays. It's a solid 45 minutes back to Chloe's apartment, even with every shortcut Chloe knows like the back of her hand, and Beca spends the first forty of it silent, letting Chloe play with her fingers and trying to think of a way to start speaking.

Sex in Chloe's car while parked literally twenty feet from her apartment door was definitely not something Beca ever considered, but she's barely managed to finish saying _now might be yet_ before Chloe's yanked her across the console and into her lap.


	2. Chapter 2

a/n: if you're curious, the songs that inspired this were metric's "the wanderlust", velvet goldmine's "blue eyes", of monsters and men's "love love love", the who's "behind blue eyes", and the cary brothers' "blue eyes" (from which i also shamelessly stole a lyric for the title).

* * *

Sometime after they've become more settled than should really be possible—there's a house, and cars, and a _puppy_ somehow, and even Aubrey now finally accepting of them and pestering Beca every other week to let Aubrey become her business manager and turn her consultation semi-business into a legitimate LLP that Aubrey can manage, now that she has her MBA—Chloe gets invited to consult on a research project at the CDC for a four month span in Atlanta.

The first month is manageable, thanks to video chats and cigarettes and a spontaneous all-night flight home that, thankfully, they can easily afford. The second, though, is harder, and Beca's started to develop a rasp to her voice from the cigarettes and Chloe hates it. Beca is mired down in a project that doesn't leave time for spontaneous cross-country flights, and Chloe is fully engrossed in her research. Beca doesn't sleep for four days sometime around week six, instead spending all her time in the office finding ways to blend together every mix she ever made with Chloe's Disney princess eyes in mind.

Sometime early in the fourth month, Beca gets shitfaced with one of the other producers she employs, and they stumble their way into the tattoo parlor in West Hollywood where Beca and Chloe got their _Titanium_ tattoos two years earlier.

She slaps her credit card down onto the counter and demands the same tattoo artist as last time. It takes seven tries for her to find the music she has saved to her cloud drive, the screen of the Mick's laptop blurring into triplicate, but she tracks it down and prints it out. Before David—who can't really stop her, seeing as she's technically his boss—or Mick—who doesn't want to stop her, because he's about to get paid for this—can do anything, she's shoved the paper into Mick's hands and plopped herself onto the table with her shirt off as she points to the unadorned side of her ribs.

Two days later, when she's recovered from her hangover and tabled the problematic project and announced a weeklong hiatus to David and her other colleagues, she boards a flight to Atlanta, rents a car and bribes the night guard so she can sneak into Chloe's office and surprise her with a shoulder massage just like she did so many years ago.

"Oh my God!" It takes Chloe exactly three seconds to leap out of her chair and throw herself at Beca, arms around her and squeezing tightly. Beca grunts out in pain, but burrows her forehead into Chloe's collarbone anyways.

"Hi," she mumbles into the hollow of Chloe's throat, fingers wrapping into the back of her lab coat.

"Beca Mitchell," Chloe says eventually, not moving from their embrace. "Why is there a bandage on your ribs?"

"How can you even—through a shirt _and_ a jacket!" Beca jerks back, staring at her incredulously.

"Beca." Chloe's hands are on her hips and she's glaring down through her glasses and—honestly, it's not fair that Chloe gets to be taller _and_ be the one of them who's actually capable of walking in heels without breaking an ankle.

Beca shrugs sheepishly, fiddling with her bracelets and she may be well into her thirties at this point, but Chloe is unnervingly good at making her feel like a lost little freshman in the dorm showers again.

"I might have gotten a little drunk," she says carefully. "With David. It's all his fault."

"And you…what, got in a bar fight?"

"What? No! The whole point of drinking with David is so _he_ does the fighting for me, he's a tank."

"So…"

Beca shrugs again, thumb sweeping absently over the tattoo of headphones on her wrist and teeth closing down over her lower lip, and it takes all of five seconds for Chloe's eyes to widen in understanding.

"You didn't. _Another_ one?"

"I was drunk, okay, and I missed you, and—"

"So you got a _tattoo_? What are you, eighteen?"

Beca's arms cross over her chest. "Excuse me, _you_ were the one who got plastered on our anniversary and insist that we get _matching _ink. You set the standard!"

"That's different. We were together when that happened!"

"We…what? You're pissed that I got a tattoo and you weren't there?"

"I'm pissed that you got a tattoo without me and _with_ David. He's about as capable of grasping meaning and symbolism as Barden."

Beca snorted. "Please, when we get home, tell him that you compared him to a runty mutt we got from the pound. I want to see you worm your way out of a headlock, it'll be fun."

"Beca!"

"What?" Beca's smirk stretched wider and wider as Chloe all but stomped her foot in frustration, until Chloe finally sighed and tugged her glasses off, rubbing at her eyes.

"Can I see it, at least?"

"I don't know, are you going to hit me?"

"Of course not!"

"Are you going to _yell_ at me?"

"If it's something stupid, then yes, totally."

Beca glares at her, and Chloe rolls her eyes. "Baby, come on, you know I can't take you seriously when you make that face. You look like a cranky teacup Chihuahua."

"Oh my _God_, I hate you."

"Come on, let me see. I'm going to see it eventually anyways, unless you flew across the country and _didn't_ expect to get lucky."

"Oh, I'm getting lucky?" Beca says, tone ricocheting into playful abruptly. She tugs the hem of her shirt up, revealing the bandage spanning her ribs.

"Jesus, Beca, what is this, an entire mural?

"If I say yes, will I still get laid?"

Chloe doesn't say anything, instead just reaching out and expertly ripping the tape loose.

"Ow! Shit, Chloe," Beca hisses out, flinching away as the adhesive rips away from her skin.

Chloe's fingers ghost over lines and lines of music notes that start just under Beca's breast, spanning along the curve of her ribs towards her spine and parading down to her hip. The skin is still angry and red around the ink, and Beca winces when Chloe's fingers touch down gently for a brief second. Her brow furrows as bright blue eyes follow the music, the same way it had in Bellas rehearsals when a song she didn't know was put in front of her.

"What is this?"

"I—I mean, here." Beca flushes, embarrassment as much a part of her genetic code as music, and digs a flash drive out of her pocket with her free hand. "It's that."

"One of your mixes?"

"Kind of." Beca is still standing there, Chloe's palm hot against sensitive skin, and she shifts uncomfortably. "It's kind of…all of them."

"All of them?"

"No _all_ all. But all the ones I made about you."

Chloe's eyes widen, jerking away from the tattoo and the flash drive and swerving up to meet Beca's. "You—_about_?"

"Yeah?"

"Not the ones you gave me?"

"No?"

"Can you answer with an answer and not another question?"

Beca rolls her eyes, reaching out on instinct and pinching at her hip. They both end up flinching—Chloe because she's grossly ticklish, Beca because her pinch backfired and left Chloe's hand pressing harder into her ribs—and Beca sighs.

"Yeah, different mixes. A lot of them are really old, and I made them when I was still traveling all the time—"

"Also known as that dark period when you were too stupid to realize how awesome we were together."

"Don't interrupt me, woman, it's rude." She swats at Chloe shoulder, finally letting her shirt fall back down over the tattoo. "But yeah, I mean, you know how it was, I spent most of my time convincing myself that leaving was better for everyone than staying, so I was thinking about it all a lot, which meant I was thinking about _you_ a lot, and oh my God, this is not new information, stop looking at me like I'm crazy, please?"

Chloe is smirking at her, and she plops down on the couch that faces her desk, tugging Beca down by the wrist until she can swing her legs up over Beca's comfortably and recline against the arm of the couch. "I'm sorry, please do continue."

"Asshole," Beca mutters. She sighs, fingers toying with the zipper on one of Chloe's boots. "Anyways. I don't know. I made so many things when I was on the road all the time, but it was like I couldn't make good music if I wasn't thinking of you, so I just wound up with this folder full of all of these mixes that no one else ever heard."

She sighs again, Chloe's eyes heavy and bright and serious as they stare at her profile, and automatically move to unzip Chloe's boots and tug them off. There's a tiny tattoo nestled into the hollow behind her anklebone, one of the two Chloe had before they met, a simple treble clef, and Beca's fingertips trace over it blindly.

"I don't know, I just…David and I were working on this idiotic project so late, and I was frustrated with it, so we went out to his brother's bar. And he was complaining about his ex-girlfriend, and I was complaining about how you're in _Atlanta_ and I was telling him the story about the _Titanium_ tattoos and one thing led to another and—"

"Wait, you told him that story?"

"Yes?" Beca finally turns to meet Chloe's eyes, uncertainty creasing her brow even as her thumbs massage along the arch of Chloe's foot, pressing instinctively. "I mean, I didn't think you'd mind, you love embarrassing me with it…"

"No, it's fine, I just—" Chloe cuts herself off, shaking her head and settling down into the couch more comfortably. Her heels dig into Beca's thigh briefly. "I'm not used to you being the one to tell it, I guess. You always get so flustered."

"Yeah, well," Beca grumbles. "I was drunk. So I told him about how you totally creeped on me in the showers freshman year, and then I told him about the tattoos, and somehow it came up that we were like a five minute walk from Mick's place, and…it happened. I don't know. I'm never drinking tequila again."

Chloe laughs, bright and clear, and a smile twitches at Beca's lips at the sound. "Serves you right, you know. Tequila is only good for body shots."

Chloe laughs even louder at the flush spreading up to Beca's ears. She sits up, pressing a brief kiss to Beca's temple before hopping off the couch and retrieving her briefcase and laptop. She settles back onto the couch, pressed to Beca's side, and boots up the laptop, flashdrive dangling from her fingers.

"That isn't your work laptop, is it? Because this stuff is like private and—"

"Quiet." One arm snakes around Beca's shoulder, hand sneaking up and clapping over her mouth securely. "My mixes, my laptop. And stop fretting." She maneuvers the flashdrive into an open port with her free hand and starts it up.

By the time it ends, _maybe I'm a crook for stealing your heart _away and _blue eyes, I just want to sing a song with you _fading into the the final loop of _oh, you're the one I had to meet_ echoing into silence, the laptop is sitting on the floor and Chloe is stretched out on the couch, Beca's figure blanketing her taller one.

"I love you," Chloe mumbles into Beca's hair. "Even if you got a tattoo without me." Her palm rests on Beca's side, soft over the tattoo, and Beca burrows more comfortably into Chloe's embrace.

"You too," Beca say sleepily. "Can I go to sleep now? I'm jetlagged and maybe still hungover."

"Serves you right," Chloe says, but she tugs a blanket off the back of the couch down and spreads it haphazardly over them.

"Why do you have a blanket in your office?" One of Beca's fingers jabs lazily into Chloe's side. "You promised you'd stop sleeping here."

"Go to sleep. My alarm's going to go off at six, just so you know."

"That's gross," Beca groans. "Take the day off. Or, y'know, the rest of time, and come back home. Your stupid dog misses you."

"Barden is not stupid!"

"Barden runs into walls and eats grass. He's an idiot."

"Shut up, or you're sleeping—"

"What, on the couch?" Beca's lips brush against Chloe's collarbone as she smirks, and Chloe huffs out a sigh in frustration.

"Under the desk."

"That's fine if you come, too."

Chloe sighs again. "Go to sleep."

"Mhm."

"I love you."

"Love you, too."

"Even though you're an idiot."

"Shut up, I'm trying to sleep. Leave me alone or I'm telling Aubrey you've been sleeping in the office again."

Chloe sighs indignantly, but falls silent anyways. Smiling, Beca pulled the blanket tighter around them and burrowed into Chloe's shoulder, quiet and content.


End file.
